We’ve increased our production this week because we had wholesale orders out the ying-yang. Thursday is usually a production day, so we had to double up at the beginning of the week to be on the road today. We are very blessed that the orders keep pouring in.
Packing the van with the wholesale spatzle boxes on a freezing and snowy morning is not what you would imagine for almost the end of April, but this is the Northeast, and anything can happen. It snowed on Memorial Day one year; I shit you not!
We were up at 4:30 am, guzzled some coffee, and fed the dogs. Otto and Klausie-boy were definitely not happy about the snow and being woken up at 4:45 am. We got dressed, packed the van, and were on the road at 6:02 am. Ahead of schedule!
We hit Saratoga, delivering first to Healthy Living then directly onto Four Seasons. We jumped on the highway and were at Honest Weight in a flash, it seemed, with their weekly delivery.
We had a stop to make in downtown Albany, and I got so excited when I spotted the Big RCA dog on top of an old warehouse. I’ve seen it from the highway before, but never up close or underneath it.
Even though I was still jacked up about seeing the big dog, we both needed to stop for more caffeine. Driving to our next stop, we saw the hard cider brewery Nine Pin and got out to say hello to our friend Bill who works as a brewmaster. Worked…he doesn’t work there anymore. Dammit! š
We were meeting our wholesale customer and Pennsylvania distributor, The Alpine Meat and Wurst House with their spatzle delivery. We meet their delivery driver at Shop-Rite in East Greenbush, NY. It works out for both of us since he delivers a variety of their products to Shop-Rite and it’s on our delivery route.
The Alpine House’s sausages, wursts, and our spatzle are available at some Pennsylvania-based Weis Markets, a supermarket chain. We aren’t sure exactly which Weis Markets, but quite a few of them. The Alpine House is located in Honesdale, PA, and sells our spatzle from their location as well. You can call the Alpine House for more information.
We grabbed lunch and started heading back; we were delivering to a new customer today, Unihog in Hoosick Falls, NY. They are an eclectic farm to restaurant and live music venue. They are only open on Tuesdays & Thursdays. Every Tuesday is Taco Tuesday with a burrito or two thrown in. Thursdays, the menu is whatever the kitchen is inspired by and what is available. We are on the menu tonight with schnitzel. Yay!
Sarah, the owner of Unihog, is a fan of our spatzle which she purchases down the street from another one of our customer Hoosick Provisions.
This is what it is all about, one small business supporting another small business!
Unihog is a place we want to go to on a Thursday night for a bite to eat and listen to live music. Last year, everything was done outside, this year things are still limited indoors, but hopefully, as summer nears some restrictions will be lifted.
Our last stop was to The Market Wagon with their spatzle delivery. We also pick up our milk order for the business from them on Thursdays. They pick up the milk the same morning the milk is bottled and nice enough to pick up ours.
I told Steve about my blog post a couple of days ago. I explained the whole thing to him about how the taste brought me back to Caterina’s Italian Ice. I know that he would never see my blog post since Steve, his family, and all the staff are members of the Mennonite community. Most of them will use their cell phones for calls and email, but not anything online.
I picked up a few grocery items and one of those lemonades. We couldn’t wait to get home at that point, after a long day being blown around by the wind and cold, in and out of the van so many times.
After we unloaded the van and let Otto and Klaus out, we ran into the house and put on our pajamas. š We each grabbed a blanket and just sat on the couches for a bit. Of course, I had to dig out my fleece pink snowflake PJ bottoms that I stored away with the rest of my winter clothes a couple of weeks ago. This afternoon I saw on my weather app that next week’s temps would be between 70 & 80! Welcome to the Northeast!